Pull Tabs and Screw Caps

I just caught up to a WSJ A-Hed piece from October 5/6, 2024. When the stack of newspapers gets too deep on the couch to do a full deep dive, and my wife starts to complain,  I sort of cull the papers into the sections that have obituaries, A-Hed pieces and book reviews. That way, I know I won't miss anything I'm really interested in that I might get an idea to write about. Pre- and post-election analysis have little value a month later. And I know who won the World Series.

It is nice to read about annoying regulations that we haven't yet adopted. The EU has mandated that starting July 3, 2024 single-use plastic bottles must be outfitted with tethered (attached) screw caps. Thus, when you open the bottle, the cap remains attached to the top of the bottle and gets in the way of your drinking the contents. This is annoying.

A BBC Breakfast news show did a whole segment early in 2024 about this rule. The U.K. is not part of the EU and therefore doesn't have to abide by the ruling. But the distributors of single-use bottles are attaching the caps no matter where they are sold in Europe. This leads to funny videos of people  showing their frustration at trying to drink from a bottle with the cap bobbing up and down under their nose.  You can see from the above photo that drinking straight from the bottle could be annoying.

Of course concerns about the environment are what are driving this regulation. Too much plastic that doesn't get recycled. Or does it?

No breakfast news show would be complete without a couch of experts to weigh in on the problem. One of the two women in the YouTube video tells us she's from Manchester, and that plastic caps and bottles, although both being plastic, do not get recycled together. Thus, although the U.K. doesn't have to adopt the EU regulation, there is no gain to have the cap attached other than keeping it from perhaps becoming litter. Manchester recycling can't absorb the two types of plastic of the cap and bottle at the came time. You learn something every day.

Cutting down on litter is the usual reason given for enacting recycling measures. The A-Hed piece shows bags supposedly filled with plastic bottle caps.  It is hard to believe that the caps have been culled from otherwise recycled bottles, unless they're from Manchester and were separated from being screwed back on empty recycled bottles.

An inventive use of the multi-colored caps was put to use in Stockport, Merseyway, U.K. where a giant mural was made from just screw caps. Perhaps our own MTA in this country could cut down on the money they spend on decorative tiles and use bottle caps instead. Just a thought.

You probably have to be over 40 to remember when in this country the anti-litter brigade got the distributors of canned beverages to eliminate the pull tab that was completely removed from the can to having it remain attached to the can.

If the consumer didn't slide the pull tab (ring) back into the can it became a candidate for being carelessly discarded. The elimination of discarded pull tabs from beaches made the people with metal detectors very happy. They were tired of all the false positive beeps when their search for coins and jewelry only yield a pull tab.

Of course I remember when the cans of my childhood had to be punctured with a can opener (thus the name). The can opener was a triangular shaped pointed tool that required the consumer to punch two holes in the top of the can. A small hole was needed to allow air to enter the can, and a larger hole was punched to allow the consumer to drink from the hole.

I remember when this can opener was referred to by my father's neighbor as they opened their Saturday beers in the backyard as the "church key." As a kid I never understood the reference, but later in life I've come to think the can opener—when opening beer cans—was getting them into heaven.

In the '50s, bottles had a 2¢ deposit. Large Coke and beer bottles were 5¢. Cans had no deposit. Discarded cans were a litter problem. I remember empty lots in Flushing that had many discarded beer cans, usually Rheingold, presumably left by teenagers.

EU member nations have to abide by EU rules. In one of those French police procedurals that I've been watching, I notice the STOP signs in France really do say STOP. Pourquoi? Why not ARRÊT, stop in French?

No, EU, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium rules. This of course creates a good deal of resentment that people in various European countries are being ruled by people in Belgium. C'est la vie.

Here's to hoping tethered caps don't become mandatory in the United States. This country disagrees on too many things already.

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